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Women speakers
The problem Technical conferences generally have a paucity of women speakers. Many have none at all, some have a token woman, and most have a minority around the 10% mark. Only a very few conferences have a strong minority (>25%) of women speakers. Conferences with "soft" subject matter such as web design, user interfaces, or community management tend to have higher proportions of female speakers than those with "harder" subject matter. Examples No women speakers * Wired Disruptive Business Conference, 2009 Single woman speaker * The Golden Gate Ruby Conference had a single female speaker in 2009 * MSC Malaysia Open Source Conference had a single technical female speaker in 2009 (although a total of 4 speakers out of 68 for 6%) Low percentage (<25%) * OSCON has had 8%-9% women speakers between 2007-2009, though some portions (eg. Ignite) have a higher percentage (see below). * SAGE-AU 2009 looks to be around 10% * Flashbelt 2009 had 5(?) women speakers out of 38, or about 13% * Open Source Bridge 2009 had 21% * Web 2.0 Expo 2009 had just under 20% * ETech 2009 had 21.7% * linux.conf.au 2008 had 13 speakers of 71, 18% and 2009 had 9 women speakers of 82, 11%. High percentage (>25%) The following conferences have had a relatively high percentage of women speakers: * HICKTech had approx 50% women speakers in 2007(?) * Gnomedex 2009 has 50% women speakers * Ignite at OSCON 2009 had approx. 50% women speakers, though OSCON overall runs around 8%. Causes A number of causes have been suggested for this: * That women simply do not submit proposals * Conference committees seek out male speakers more actively than female ones * Selection committees may be consciously or unconsciously biased against female speakers when selecting papers * There are fewer women in the field in the first place, so the lack of women speakers just reflects this Solutions * If you are running a conference, you could put a Diversity statement in your Call For Papers, making it clear that the conference values diversity and would welcome submissions from women and other minority groups. * Some tips for reviewing submissions: ** One option would be to have blind reviews, removing identifying information from the submissions, to avoid subconscious gender bias. Similar efforts in other fields have resulted in higher rates of women being accepted. ** You could have a policy of attempting to have the diversity of presenters match the diversity of submissions, to within a certain margin (eg. plus or minus one speaker) * There is a list of potential women speakers at Geek Speak Women, a site by Brenda Wallace. * Because of the history of poor proportions of women speakers and other issues that occur at Technical conferences, women may be reticent about submitting papers. Organisers may need to offer greater encouragement, including: ** Personal one-to-one outreach to potential speakers ** Let the speakers know that you are particularly interested in speaker diversity and getting more women speakers ** Ask potential speakers to recommend other potential speakers * Women are less likely to be sent to conferences by their employers, and more likely to be working for themselves or working as volunteers on projects. Therefore, the cost of travel and accommodation to a conference may be a barrier. Offering travel bursaries or other funding to speakers may help with this. Tips for women speakers These are tips especially for women who would like to speak at tech conferences. * Don't undersell yourself. Imposter syndrome is a killer. Most of the men submitting are just as much imposters as you are -- probably moreso, if the studies are right -- but they don't let it stop them. * Nat Torkington (OSCON organiser) says: "When I choose keynoters, I look for people with something big to say, more than just "I did X software thing". I need impact, scope, magnitude. When you coach women for proposals and so on, it's worth making sure they know that." * Emma Jane Hogbin says that when she was organising HICKTech, she looked for people who could tell great stories about their experiences with technology. You don't need to be a technical expert to have a great story to tell! * If you are approached to speak at a conference, and if you have the energy to deal with it, ask the organisers if they are interested in having more women speakers. Often they would like to have more but just don't know where to look. Your social networks will tend to have more women in them than theirs, so you may be able to suggest someone to them and do a friend a favour at the same time.